How much do hospitals spend?

Hospital expenditure includes recurrent expenditure and capital expenditure. Recurrent expenditure is money that is spent on goods and services that are consumed during the year, for example, salaries. Capital expenditure includes money spent on buildings and large pieces of equipment.

Public hospitals

In 2010–11, recurrent expenditure by public hospitals was $36,985 million (excluding depreciation). After adjusting for inflation, this represented an increase of 8.2% compared with 2009–10.

Over 62% of this expenditure was for salary payments ($22,959 million) (Figure 6).

About 70% of recurrent expenditure was on admitted patient services—rather than emergency department, outpatient and other services for non-admitted patients, and other hospital activities.

Between 2006–07 and 2010–11, recurrent expenditure by public hospitals increased by an average of 5.9% per year (after adjusting for inflation) (Figure 7).